


Hotstoppers

by theirontriad



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Calling All Tims, Hello Internet AU?, Hotstoppers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-03
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2019-03-13 07:14:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13565526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theirontriad/pseuds/theirontriad
Summary: Coffeeshops are the worst, for him. They’re always far too busy for his liking in the early mornings, and the baristas tend to have a nasty habit of remembering faces and orders and names if you went there more than a few times. And if they did, Arthur would have tospeakto them. And makesmall talkwith them.No, thanks.-In which Merlin is a just a little (bit) magical, Arthur is a just little (too) organized, and it all somehow works. The Coffeeshop AU full of references that no one will get, but needed writing.





	Hotstoppers

**Author's Note:**

> My sincerest apologies to Brady Haran and CGP Grey, the creators of the [excellent podcast](http://www.hellointernet.fm/) that inspired this whole thing. I really did not mean for this to happen when I sat down to write with your podcast in the background.
> 
> This story may, horrifyingly, be continued, but for now will remain a one-shot.

Arthur has a routine.

Every morning, when he wakes to his 6:00am alarm, he allows himself to hit the snooze button exactly twice. At 6:20am, he’s in the shower (allowing two minutes for fumbling to get his contacts out). By 6:45am, he’s dressed, shaved, brushed his teeth, and carefully looked over his to-do list for the day, which, granted, changes very little on a daily basis but warrants a cursory once-over anyway. By 7:00am, he’s at the coffee shop.

The coffee shop is never any one coffee shop. Arthur has a system for choosing his coffee shops. It isn’t that he has exacting preferences for how he takes his coffee, really—a latte is a latte is a latte, after all, and he doesn’t care for the oddly named floofy drinks that Morgana subjects herself to on a daily basis (“which _must_ come from that one bakery down the road from Gingham Street, you know the one, Arthur—now be a dear and fetch one for me or I’ll eat all the biscuits Gwen made you last week”). Arthur just—he isn’t the most competent at social interactions. He’s fine, he supposes, in situations where he knows his role. He nods stiffly to taxi drivers after they drop him off; he makes polite, if stilted, small talk with the girls that his father insists on setting him up with at various social functions. Those aren’t so bad. He understands that he will likely never see these people ever again, and as such, he has no reason to worry about any possible future interactions.

But actually conversing with strangers—well. As Morgana puts it, Arthur is _awful_ with strangers.

He’s brusque, and sullen, and snappish. He can’t seem to put together a sentence that doesn’t sound vaguely insulting, and even then, tends to be wholly unapologetic about the whole thing. More than once, Morgana has voiced her surprise that he’s managed to make it to adulthood with any friends at all—though, granted, they were mostly made through her and her coquettishness. Leon, Gwaine and Percival had all been ex-boyfriends, ex-friends-with-benefits, or ex-let’s-not-put-labels-on-this’s of Morgana’s, all of who’d eventually met Arthur and—through some bumps on the road—got on with him like a house on fire. Lance is the one exception—he’d been Arthur’s housemate in uni, and they’d become inseparable after a particular incident with a football, some Christmas ornaments, and several buckets of paint that they both still refuse to talk about.

So Arthur _does_ have friends. Because Arthur isn’t a bad person, not really, as Gwen (Lance’s girlfriend, and nice enough to be an actual angel) repeatedly assures him. He’s just a bit awkward when meeting new people—particularly new people with whom he might have to interact again (when he really, really doesn’t want to). He has enough friends, thank you very much. He isn’t wanting for any more socializing than strictly necessary.

Coffeeshops are the worst, for him. They’re always far too busy for his liking in the early mornings, and the baristas tend to have a nasty habit of remembering faces and orders and names if you went there more than a few times. And if they did, Arthur would have to _speak_ to them. And make _small talk_ with them.

No, thanks.

He has every coffeeshop within a two-mile radius of his flat mapped out on his phone. There are eight—three Prets, two Starbucks, two Costas, and one independent hipster place that he’s never been able to pronounce the name of. He goes to them on a carefully calculated rotating basis, based on the average tenure and shift length of a given barista—about eight months and six hours, respectively, except in the summer months, when secondary and uni students live in the coffee shops for four months straight.

When he’d first moved in—younger, more naïve, unlearned in the ways of coffeeshops—he’d gone to the Costa round the corner every morning, before the girl had started having his order ready the moment he’d arrived and greeting him by name. When that had happened, he’d stared at her for what was probably longer than strictly necessary, before stiffly turning on his heel and leaving without even taking his drink. So he’d created his system.

(He could, of course, theoretically brew his own coffee, avoiding the problem altogether—if he wasn’t absolute pants at making coffee. He’d tried to do it with progressively more expensive and complicated machines—including an absurdly priced black and chrome monstrosity that had been a birthday gift from Morgana—before realizing that it wasn’t the coffee, or the coffee maker. It was him. He was simply cursed to destroy any coffee he attempted to make.)

Morgana thought that he was absolutely mad, of course, but she’d told him so since she was five and he was three, so he didn’t put much stock in it—he was being _reasonable_ , damn it. Who wanted to have a conversation with a random person at seven in the morning, even if they were the one providing the caffeine? Absolutely no one. Bully Arthur for being the one who worked out how to get around it. And Arthur would have happily gone on with his system until the end of time, if it wasn’t for the _Thing_.

The _Thing_ occurs—or begins, rather, because it really is a series of occurrences—on a fresh spring morning. It’s the beginning of Starbucks week, which Arthur doesn’t like much—the crowds tend to be larger and more aggressive, especially on a Monday, but Starbucks has such a high turnover rate that it doesn’t make sense not to keep it in the rotation twice as long as the others. Some would call it poor planning to schedule his least favourite shop more than any of the others, but in reality, it takes twice the time for the Starbucks baristas to start recognizing faces. That, in addition to his resolute only speaking-when-necessary rule, has maximized his lack of recognizability. It all works out in the end, really. Probably. It’s worked for him so far, in any case.

He should have known it would be a bad day from the moment he arrives.

He’s late, for one thing—he’s never late, because he has a _routine_ , but this time he’s late because he let Gwaine and Percy drag him out for drinks on a Sunday night to “fix his crippling loneliness”, which ended with his head in the toilet and no one in his bed. His head is pounding so badly that it really is no surprise when he nearly slips on a bit of spilt tea at the entryway, toppling into several people ahead of him, who mutter and shift about coldly in the most British way possible. Then, after he’s muttered apologies and fixed his tie and tucked his eyes safely behind his sunglasses, he nearly slips and falls _again_ while in line, somehow managing to knock a small child to the ground, earning a crying fit and a furious look from the boy’s mother. And then he knocks a stack of coffee cans to the ground when he tries to help the boy up.

It’s a relief getting to the counter. He wants to leave, please, as soon as possible. Preferably with coffee, although at this point, he would leave without if it means an end to the humiliation. But honestly, what kind of person brings a small child to a busy coffeeshop at half seven in the morning? A complete monster, that was who. Morgana probably would.

“I’ll have a venti latte with a double shot of espresso, please, to go.” Adding the please makes him neither a particularly good customer nor a particularly bad one. Being direct makes him less memorable. Please, please, please, please, _please_.

“That will be four-ten, then. Name for the order?”  The person behind the counter sounds far too amused for Arthur’s liking, but he’s straightforward. Thank the gods.

“Arthur.” He impatiently waves his card in the direction of the machine. If there’s any pleasure to be derived from coming to the infernal hell that is Starbucks, it’s the contactless payments. There are very few things in the world that Arthur loves, but they include his iPad, his friends, occasionally Morgana, and contactless payments.

“Oh, what a coincidence! My name is Merlin.” Not so straightforward, then. Arthur looks up at him through his sunglasses, irritated. He’s young, mid-twenties at the most—likely a uni kid—gangly, and altogether too awake for this hour. Never mind that Arthur would usually be at work already at this time—he’s annoyed, and hung over, and his knees hurt from falling over earlier. It’s the bloody principle of the thing.

The barista—Merlin, who in the world would name their child Merlin?—catches his look, and flushes a little. Dimly, Arthur notices his cheekbones. And then pointedly unnotices them. “Erm. It’ll be coming up on your left. Would you like your receipt?”

Arthur shakes his head tersely (to shake off the cheekbones thought as much as to indicate the negative), and steps off to the left. Directly on the foot of the child he’d knocked down earlier.

As the crying starts up again, Arthur looks up to the heavens and appeals to any god(esse)s that would hear him: _What have I bloody done to deserve this?_ He would leave here and now, if he hadn’t already bloody ordered the bloody coffee. He should have just left and gone to the Costa on Yew. It was right around the corner from the office and it’s been long enough that they wouldn’t know his face anymore, or at least, his order. Probably.  Hopefully. There had been that blonde barista who kept trying to slip him her number, but perhaps—

Arthur winces as the screaming went up to a higher pitch.

Fuck Starbucks. He would go to the Costa tomorrow, blonde barista be damned.  He wouldn’t be able to show his face in this place for another month at least.

“Venti double-shot latte!”

Despite Arthur’s clear irritation (all right, _rudeness_ , if you want him to say it; he can admit it even if he can’t help it), Merlin is smiling when he slides over the drink (Arthur resolutely does not notice that he has dimples). Gratefully, Arthur takes it, and is in the process of sliding it into its sleeve when he notices the odd little thing poking out of the opening on the lid. He pulls on it and it slides out—it’s a little stick with a stopper at the end which has, absurdly, a tiny happy-face sticker stuck to it.

“I call them hotstoppers.”

Arthur looks up, eyebrows raised. Merlin looks entirely too pleased with himself. (It seems that this particular barista has a way with getting on Arthur’s nerves. Too fucking amused, and awake, and pleased. _And_ , Arthur thinks, with an odd sort of satisfaction, _his ears are far too big_. _So there_.) “It’s meant to keep the coffee in. I invented them.”

“Right.” Oddly, Arthur feels his mouth twitching up a little, and suddenly has to steadfastly resist being charmed by the whole thing. He’s having a terrible, no good, very bad day. And he’s _late_. He has no business talking to this barista for longer than necessary. He should go right now and never come back—but he keeps standing there for the moment, and looks back down at the little happy face. It’s crooked.

“When you come back you should let me know if it was effective. It’s still in its beta-testing stage.” And too earnest, as well. Struggling with himself, Arthur gets out what could vaguely be considered a noise of assent, before turning straight around to stride to the door. His face is probably twitching. Gods.

And just because his day is awful, and cursed, and he can’t have nice things, on his way out, he trips _again_. He hears quiet muttering and a short peal of laughter from behind him as he stiffly picks himself back up, coffee in hand, irritation back in full force. Bloody fucking hell. He’s never going to come back here ever again.

He barely notices that he hasn’t spilt a drop of coffee until he’s at his desk at work.


End file.
